Flock of Birds (Only Position Tracking working? No Orientation?)

[TheLostBrain]

Hi.

I just downloaded the WorldViz demo and I'm trying to test out the Ascension Technology Flock of Birds Support.

I'm using an ERT so I set the ERC (via dips) as the first bird in the chain..and the bird with the sensor as the second (serial connection is coming from the ERC).

Tested this in Winbird...everything working great... full 6dof!


Tested the following in WorldViz... and I'm only getting position information (x,y,z)...no orientation (yaw,pitch, roll)


import viz
viz.go()
viz.add( 'tut_ground.wrl' )

PORT_FOB = 1
NUM_FOB = 2

ert = viz.add('flockofbirds.dls')
sensor = viz.add('flockofbirds.dls')

viz.link(sensor,viz.MainView)


Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for any help!

[farshizzo]

What dip switch settings are you using?

[TheLostBrain]

Originally Posted by farshizzo

What dip switch settings are you using?

ERC: 11100010
FOB: 11100100

Thanks

[farshizzo]

I think your addresses might be need to be changed. Can you try the following dip switch settings (be sure to repower the device after changing it):

ERC: 11100001
FOB: 11100010

[TheLostBrain]

Originally Posted by farshizzo

I think your addresses might be need to be changed. Can you try the following dip switch settings (be sure to repower the device after changing it):

ERC: 11100001
FOB: 11100010

Dip switch 8 is for FLY/TEST mode.
(0/Off = Fly, 1/On = Test)

Doesn't correspond to the Bird Addressing...

Any other ideas?

Is there some way to test and see the orientation data that Vizard is getting from the bird?

Thanks again

[farshizzo]

My mistake, your original settings should be fine then. Not sure what the problem could be. We and other customers have successfully used the ERT with our plugin. I remember having a problem with it once though and we had to reset the device, which is different than repowering it. I forget what the reset procedure is, but if you know then you might want to try it out.

Other than linking the sensor to an object, you could manually retrieve and print the data. Example:

def printEuler():
    print sensor.getEuler()
vizact.onkeydown(' ',printEuler)

[TheLostBrain]

Fixed!

Finally had a chance to sit down with this again...and managed to get it fixed!
Figured I'd come back and share for anyone else that may wind up experiencing the same issue.


The problem was caused by the bird being in the wrong "mode".
I had previously been playing around in cbird (a dos based utility from Ascension) and the last mode I was testing was "Position".

The issue was resolved when I simply went back into cbird and chose "Position/Angles". As soon as I exited cbird and came back in to Vizard everything was working correctly.


So for those who may not know their way around cbird here are the exact key presses you'd want to do:

1. 1 (For 115200 baud)
2. 0 (For no further changes and to enter the main menu)
3. 15 (For Change Value)
4. 16 (For FBB Auto Config)
5. 2 (For the number of birds...this may be different in your case)
6. Enter Enter (To get out of the status report)
7. 5 (For Position/Angles)
8. 1 (For Continuous Point Mode)
9. N (To not save ASCII data)
10. Enter Enter (To get back to the main menu)
11. 0 (To Quit)

Once you've done this simply go back into Vizard and Run your script, etc. and everything should now be working correctly.

FYI: cbird, the user manual and everything else for the Flock of Birds can be obtained here:
ftp://ftp.ascension-tech.com/PRODUCT...k_of_Birds.zip